MONTICELLO — If you think the election that's turned into the Battle for Bloomingburg will just be settled by ballots, think again.

A day after the vote — which has challenger Frank Gerardi leading incumbent Bloomingburg Mayor Mark Berentsen by more than a 3-1 ratio — the contest has morphed into a war of lawyers. They're fighting over the more than 120 votes whose registrations have been challenged — votes that could determine the election in this eastern Sullivan County village of 400.

The lawyers for Shalom Lamm — whose 396-home Hasidic development is at the center of the battle — want to essentially dismiss the challenges. It's expected that most of the challenged voters, who live in buildings owned by Lamm, would be votes for Berentsen and his Bloomingburg Strong team who support Lamm's development. Gerardi and his Rural Heritage Party candidates oppose it.

"They should have been allowed to vote and their votes should have been counted," said Lamm lawyer Josh Ehrlich of Albany. "And then you have a post election challenge, not before."

Lamm's lawyers are also challenging the fact that the voters whose registrations were questioned — most of them Hasidic - were served with subpoenas on a Sunday. That was because, said the lawyers for Gerardi and the Rural Community Coalition, they didn't want to serve them on the Jewish sabbath of Saturday.

"So we waited until Sunday," said RCC lawyer Jonathan Chase of Cornwall-on-Hudson, who summed up the case like this: "Their job is to knock out the challenges, ours is to keep them in."

Meanwhile, the Sullivan County Board of Elections will start reviewing the challenges without opening the ballots.

Both sides will be back in court March 31, said Sullivan County Supreme Court Judge Stephan Schick — when more legal maneuvers will likely occur. "We'll run crazy with procedure," he said.

What he didn't need to say was that no matter what decisions are made, the lawyers will likely appeal them.